The NYT korporation pisses me off

[paineinthearse]

:rant:

I've attended four speeches by US Representatives over the past 6 months where, despite pre-meeting publicity, not one reporter was present.

March - Dennis Kucinich in Amesbury, MA, speaking on his proposal for a Department of Peace. I had contacted the Boston Globe's assignment editor several days in advance, but he said they had nobody available. Follow-up with the ombudsman was fruitless. The audience was >100.

April - Marty Meehan in Bedford, MA, speaking of his resolution to create a time table to disengage from Iraq. The audience was >150.

August - Jim McGovern in Worcester, MA, speaking about his factfinding trip to the middle east and called for IMMEDIATE withdrawal from Iraq. The audience was >200.

August - Barney Frank in Boston, topic was DSM (other speakers included John Bonifaz and State Rep. Gloria Fox). Prior to the meeting I conversed with the ombudsman, who sent a message to the city editor; the city editor did not deem the event newsworthy and decided not to send a reporter. Audience was >300.

The Worcester Telegram & Gazette and the Boston Globe are owed by the NY Times.

We have no Dem leadership? Bull. We have leaders, they just can't get any press.

The next time you see a DU post whining about lack of Dem leadership, refer them to this post.

:rant:

[Nikki Stone 1]

1. kick

:kick:

[Nothing Without Hope]

2. So very, very true. We MUST MUST MUST turn from the deadwood

to our true, best leaders or the whole nation will sink.

The DNC, let alone the DLC, and the "liberal" press hold us back for their own reasons.

Screw 'em. It's too iimportant to listen to them whine and suppress and distort any more. Ever.

Recommended

[autorank]

3. The NYT Doesn't Care, They Don't Have To : REC to Bash the NYT!

This is amazing. You care enough to go to the speeches, these are major Democrats, and nobody shows up. Nobody pays you to show up but this is their job, and they can't make it. They have people all over who they can call on as needed. They didn't bother to cover these liberal Democrats on even one out of four occasions. Thanks for nothing "liberal" NYT

:rant:

The NYT promoted the war in Iraq by featuring Judith Miller's stories for week’s claming that there were WMD in Iraq. The NYT either knew, in which case they are grossly incompetent, or didn't know, in which case they are grossly incompetent, that Chalabi was the sole source for these stories. It would have taken exactly 2 phone calls to confirm that he was unreliable or one news search to confirm that he was a convicted embezzler in Jordan, $200 million, a liar and thief in other words.

The NYT has blood on its hands. They gave a 1/2 assed apology for their crimes of incompetence but that's not enough.

They need to be pilloried and shamed whenever we get the chance. They are the enemies of the truth and the enemies of real journalism.

[EC]

4. You're right

every time I see those posts that Dem's are doing nothing, I know the poster is very mis-informed..we CAN blame the press. But since we KNOW their behavior it's up to us to get the word out. Push the free presses that do report and speak loudly. I don't know how else we can circumvent the press, but we will have to.

[paineinthearse]

5. "it's up to us to get the word out" - be the media

I hope everyone is aware of INDYMEDIA.

http://www.indymedia.org/en/

The Independent Media Center is a network of collectively run media outlets for the creation of radical, accurate, and passionate tellings of the truth. We work out of a love and inspiration for people who continue to work for a better world, despite corporate media's distortions and unwillingness to cover the efforts to free humanity.

History

The Independent Media Center (www.indymedia.org), was established by various independent and alternative media organizations and activists in 1999 for the purpose of providing grassroots coverage of the World Trade Organization (WTO) protests in Seattle. The center acted as a clearinghouse of information for journalists, and provided up-to-the-minute reports, photos, audio and video footage through its website. Using the collected footage, the Seattle Independent Media Center (seattle.indymedia.org) produced a series of five documentaries, uplinked every day to satellite and distributed throughout the United States to public access stations.

The center also produced its own newspaper, distributed throughout Seattle and to other cities via the internet, as well as hundreds of audio segments, transmitted through the web and Studio X, a 24-hour micro and internet radio station based in Seattle. The site, which uses a democratic open-publishing system, logged more than 2 million hits, and was featured on America Online, Yahoo, CNN, BBC Online, and numerous other sites. Through a decentralized and autonomous network, hundreds of media activists setup independent media centers in London, Canada, Mexico City, Prague, Belgium, France, and Italy over the next year. IMCs have since been established on every continent, with more to come.

[welshTerrier2]

6. maybe this will help ...

you're right to point out the lack of press coverage for the "little" Democrats you mentioned ... it is inexcusable, especially for local and statewide papers, not to have coverage of our elected representatives ... the press is absolutely guilty of the charges ... and the crime isn't that they're playing partisan politics; the crime is that they are failing to meet their obligations to help sustain our democracy ...

it is unconscionable for the press not to play a key role in educating the electorate about what their elected representatives are doing and saying ...

having said that, the lack of Dem leadership i frequently criticize is not coming from any of the fine Democrats you listed ... the "media whore" Democrats have had plenty of "face time". I find most of what i've seen, like failing to take a leadership role on Iraq, well, underwhelming ... perhaps we need to do a better job promoting some of the Party's heroes you mentioned to the national stage and getting some of the others to "get off the stage" ...

with regard to the NY Times, a paper that once had the courage to publish the Pentagon Papers and stand up against the tyranny of the right-wing, i couldn't agree more ... but perhaps there's still hope for reform there ... at least this guy thinks so:

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/all-the-news-thats-fit-t_b_6426.html

"Sulzberger said the biggest moose facing the Times and all news organizations is what he called 'the false dichotomy between quality journalism and quality profits.' To address that, executives at the Times agreed on a value system that included the words, 'Editorial excellence and independence are essential to our profitability, and profit sustains them.'" <skip>

Can we in the blogging community reach Arthur Sulzberger? Can we get him to see that his company needs to transform itself again? Will he wake up and see for what they are the social, economic and political forces that have caused his company to become so different from the company that published The
Pentagon Papers?

Maybe it would help if Arthur was given an alternative to see...an alternative beyond his company's loyalty to the forces that have made it the sick organization it is today. After all, change that is motivated by the desire to do something positive in the future is at least as powerful as change that is motivated by the desire to stop doing something that doesn't work today. <skip>

I know that there are some people who would like to see The New York Times punished for the relatively terrible job of reporting "what's fit to print" that it's doing now. But I would prefer to try and save The New York Times rather than bury it. I think it has the potential - under Arthur Sulzberger's leadership - to once again become the greatest newspaper in America...perhaps the greatest on Earth. After all, a newspaper that published an editorial like President Bush's Loss of Faith can't be all bad.

[paineinthearse]

7. There are two factions at the NYT and its subsidiaries

The "old guard" liberals such as Mona Dowd and Tom Oliphant and the korporatists / those in bed with Bushco.

I'm taking the weekend off, going to immerse in folk music at the club where Bob met Joan.

See y'all next week.